


Captive Fins

by Ava_of_Skia



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Angst, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Blood, Captivity, Ethic Debate, Fluff, Forced Fighting, Gay Keith (Voltron), Gen, How Do I Tag, Injury Recovery, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mates, Merperson Keith (Voltron), Merperson Lance (Voltron), My First Fanfic, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Reunions, The Paladins are Fish
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 22:10:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13374090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ava_of_Skia/pseuds/Ava_of_Skia
Summary: Life was normal. Hunt, survive, live, simple. It was a safe routine. It could be better but it could be worse, Lance couldn't complain. Life was good until it wasn't. His species long kept secret was no longer. Humanity's looming threat had become all the more real and now it affected him personally. Life was not simple. Life was not safe.This was inspired by KnifeBinaryPrince's A Fighting Chance. Go check that piece of art out!http://archiveofourown.org/works/11614155/chapters/26111457





	Captive Fins

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Fighting Chance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11614155) by [KnifeBinaryPrince](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnifeBinaryPrince/pseuds/KnifeBinaryPrince). 



> Fair warning I've never written a fanfic before so this might be atrocious. With that out of the way let's go!

When the merpeople were discovered the world went into a heated debate over whether or not this new species should be treated as if they were human. Many people believed that the human-like ocean dwellers were nothing more than that; human-like. Those people said that they should be treated as highly intelligent fish and deserved no special treatment. However, alternatively, many people also jumped to make it illegal to treat the merpeople as anything but people.

This war of opinions went on for months before the United Nations came to a collective verdict. "The merpeople are to be treated as highly intelligent beings and will be given rights slightly lesser to humans," A representative told The New York Times. Protests around the globe caused certain areas to pass laws, further protecting the merpeople and banned many things such as forced fighting, and keeping them in captivity for reasons other than rehabilitation. As months passed other dilemmas occurred, and the majority of the world put merpeople to the back of their minds.

As is such with all laws, eventually the mer-protection laws were broken. Fighting rings, black markets, and other such things began to appear, plaguing law enforcement with an ever-increasing population of traumatized and injured merpeople who, if released, would not be able to survive in the wild. To combat the problem the U.S. government chose to support and work with sea life sanctuaries in saving the lucky mers that were rescued from fights and the like.

__________

Plaxum enjoyed her work. She was able to inspire awe in everyone who came to the sanctuary and work with the most adorable creatures. Among said creatures, and not so secretly her favorite, were the ever-fluctuating population of mers that called the rescue sanctuary home.

She had only begun working there a couple of years ago but the sanctuary and most of its senior staff, such as Allura the director or Coran, had been witness to some of the first merpeople to ever be rehabilitated. Plaxum did not envy them, everyone including the higher-ups had had to work grueling hours initially before they were able to refine their care system down to the art that is is now.

Simply put, a new mer would be evaluated, rehabilitated, and if able released. The E.R.R. system, as her colleagues liked to call it. Not only did the senior staff create this but they also were among the lucky few to discover and compile the common traits of the species as a whole. For instance, all mers were known to have sharp teeth and claw-like nails. Another common trait, although not as expected is that all mers other than the shark breeds have lateral tails like aquatic mammals, despite their fish-like scales.

At the moment she was in the process of evaluating one of the newly rescued mers. A vacationing family had found a merman badly tangled in fishing line washed up on a local beach. They had called in Altea Marine Life Rescue and her work began once this mer was cleared by the medical team and placed in an isolation pool. The first thing that she did was identify his subspecies, and as far as she could tell from her seat opposite him across the pool he was like a Siamese fighting fish. “Sleek blue scaled body and rippling fabric like fins,” she wrote her observations down on the clipboard. Plaxum carefully got up and walked closer around the circular pool to get a better look at his human half.

Since he had to be sedated in order for the fishing line to be cut out of his wounds, he had been unconscious when they placed him in the hammock, set into the pool's edge just below the waterline. Now he had curled his tail around himself as tightly as his bandages would allow. He reminded her of her brother almost, very similar caramel skin and slim frame. Her brother, however, was on the other side of the country and obviously not half fish.  

__________

Lance could feel himself waking up. Ever so slowly coming out of his dream. He could still feel the embrace of his pod; feel the ghost of tails and limbs draped on him and pressed against his sides. A shiver ran up his spine in reaction to the dearly missed sensation and he ran his hands up and down his arms.  As he came back to himself he noticed white strips of something wrapped tightly around areas of himself, some constraining his fins uncomfortably. Drowsily, Lance began scratching at the wrappings on his arms, hissing when the result of peeling the edge up was stinging. The slight pain brought him to his senses effectively. Lance remembered.

He had been hunting. He remembered a confusing blur of faint lines that he could feel but not see and sharp pain cutting into his body. A stabbing pain in his throat. Something cutting his arms and tail that only worsened as he panicked and thrashed to escape it. What had happened next was as fast as lightning; there had been divers with a thick net and then a flash of red and black and they were gone. His last blurry memory before blacking out was thick clouding of blood in the water. What had happened to him? More importantly what was happening to him?

Quickly, he twisted on to his back, uncurling his tail and sat up. Doing so brought the gills on his sides out of the water, forcing him to take a moment to start breathing out of his mouth and nose instead, it didn’t bring about a pleasant feeling, to say the least. There were walls anywhere he looked and something akin to the materials he had found in shipwrecks stretched between round poles, far above him and the walls. He could smell the ocean in the calming breeze, but there was something else, a scent horrifyingly strong and familiar. A human sat almost two tail-lengths away from him.

Just as quickly as he lunged at it scrambled backward out of reach, leaving him fuming, clinging to the water’s edge. Angry hisses and clicks were attempted but deemed too painful and dissolved into aggressive splashes and glares. The two beings locked into a silent stalemate, waiting for the other to make a move. Ever so slowly Lance sunk to the bottom of his pool, tiring quickly and giving into the increasing pain in his tail and throat.

Shock washed over him, he was trapped in a human structure. He had heard horror stories about people snatched out of the water by loud metal beasts and nets. Up until now, he thought that they were just that, stories. Was that what had happened to him? Had he been taken from his home, his family? No, that couldn’t be right. From what he could remember the diver that had been there had left him for dead. He had been bleeding out, trapped on the bottom of the ocean. How had he gotten here? Where was here? Lance clutched his head in an attempt to ward off the growing headache of questions.

A splash on the surface of the water drew his attention. Steadily a small piece of meat made its way to the bottom of the pool just out of arm's reach from him. Curious, he inched towards it, reaching out and inspecting it. He briefly looked back up to where it had dropped from and seeing a definite lack of spying human eyes, popped the food in his mouth to eat. The meat tasted bland and dry, though to his stomach it was godsent. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he had eaten, but if the noises his stomach were making were anything to go off of he wanted more food, badly.

Gentle strokes of his tails brought his head just above the surface, not too far to cause him to breathe air but enough for the human to take notice. Lance wouldn’t let her get close enough to reach but the silent treaty was understood, “You don’t get close and give me food, and I’ll stay on the surface”. Slowly the human reached behind her and brought out another piece of meat. She tossed it into the water in front of him, suffice to say the scrap of fish did not last long.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I really hope you all liked the first chapter! Please tell me if I need to change anything and this may be a stupid thing to say but hindsight is 20/20 so if you have constructive criticism I'm all for it! Also, it should be said that this is more something for me than anything else so I can't promise anything as far as an update schedule... sorry.


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